Process 'Derailed But Not Dead'

In a posting made today via Facebook, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif confirmed that the ongoing P5+1 talks with Iran would resume, despite recent US sanctions which halted the talks on Friday.

The US announced the sanctions late last week, targeting companies trading with Iran. The argument was that this technically didn’t violate a pledge not to impose new sanctions on Iran, though Iran withdrew from the talks at the time and Russia termed the US move a violation of the “spirit” of the pact.

In an interview, Zarif said the sanctions had “derailed” the process briefly, but that it was not dead, and that Iran remained committed to getting the talks back on the right track.

“We are committed to the plan of action and the implementation of Geneva – but we believe it takes two to tango,” added Zarif. The US has not commented on the talks since, but no new sanctions are expected for at least a few weeks.

Peace with Iran is bad for both the US Military Industrial Complex and Israel. Both have instructed the flunkies on their payrolls to do what it takes to derail the talks. McCain, and others of his ilk, have no problem selling what little souls they have to the moneychangers.

The USA is complicit in executing, conservatively, 1,025,300 Iranians, many thousands of those with illegal chemical weapons such as sarin and mustard gas.

The USA then moved to executing Iraqis, and succeeded in first executing somewhere from 500,000 to 1 million Iraqi children, then, following that, another million Iraqis or so.

The USA has invaded about 80 countries. Iran hasn't carried out aggression in a couple of hundred years (unless you count three small islands stolen by Britain then retaken by Iran under the US-backed Shah).

Iran can't hold a candle to the world's leading terrorist state, even if it wanted to.

By the 1970s, SAVAK had created a terror state within Iran, where its influence was seen as pervasive, where every Iranian was terrified that any remark he or she made might be interpreted as somehow being against the Shah, that SAVAK would hear about it, and that they would be brought in, where they would be horribly tortured and in many cases simply executed.

– Dr. Kenneth Pollack, noted former CIA intelligence analyst and expert on Middle East politics and military affairs. He has served on the National Security Council staff and has written several articles and books on international relations.

The Iranian revolution may well have ended up secular – but SAVAK virtually destroyed the secular opposition to the shah (king). So although the revolution was not originally an Islamic one, by the time the shah was overthrown, the secular elements had been destroyed by the US-backed SAVAK to an extent where they couldn't compete with the Islamic element.

During all these efforts by Sec. Kerry and President Obama to cut a deal at almost any price, it amazes me that there has never been a mention of including concessions on Iran's human rights abuses. If you are going to negotiate with a nation under the belief that their word is their bond, behavior is a pretty important component of any deal. Simply taking a regime's leaders at their word without any demonstrable proof is naive at best and stupid at worse. If the US were to hold Iran accountable for example in halting public executions, releasing political prisoners and loosening restrictions on a free press and internet and satellite TV access to outside news sources, then you might be persuaded to believe that Iran is indeed wanting to change. But absent any of those moves, there is little to show that Iran's leadership — at its core — has really changed at all and thus can't be trusted to hold up its end of any nuclear bargain.